Do you believe that strong plants attract fewer pests than weak and struggling plants?

Fire

It seems to be a commonly accepted idea in gardening that we ward of pests like slugs or aphids by making the plant heathier. For example, that, like for like, a strong, healthy rose will have fewer aphids than a weak one; or a stronger broad bean plant will not attract blackfly.

Butterfly66

Its logical that weaker plants are more susceptible to diseases and stress, just like we are but don’t see why they would not attract pests. They can maybe better tolerate the damage but how can health make them repellant or less attractive to eat?

Alan Clark2 in Liverpool

Perhaps it is the other way round - they are weak because they have a lot of pests.

Hostafan1

no

I can't see greenfly settling on a weak plant then there's a lovely juicy specimen next to it.
Another thing, oft repeated by MD, which I think has no basis in fact

Chris-P-Bacon

yes

On the whole I think healthy plants have a better chance to shrug off pest damage - logical I suppose but equally I don't think pests in general choose unhealthy plants as a preference.

Topbird

no

Ditto what Hosta said. 

I think pest damage is probably more noticeable on a weaker plant and I do think they are more prone to disease and fungal attack - but, if anything, they are probably less likely to be targeted by pests.

raisingirl

no

It's not been my experience, generally. As Topbird said, diseases yes, but pests, not necessarily. Slugs and rabbits and mice don't appear to discriminate in my garden. I think MD often talks about hostas being less slugged if they are growing well. IME that's not true, but a bigger plant can spare a few more leaves before it becomes noticeable. All of them get eaten when the weather is on the slugs' side

CharlotteF

shrug

It does seem to be the case for aphids in my garden (I think sturdier stems are maybe harder for them to suck?) but slugs and snails ravage even my healthy plants so I'm not convinced that it follows for everything!

Fire

Roses are an interesting case. Fungal diseases like blackspot don't seem to hit weaker plants worse - it's seems more a case of which variety of rose and the geography. Also with aphids, I have healthy roses covered in blooms but also some years they are crusted by aphids. Nothing that I can see suggests the plants are weak or unhappy. Sawfly does not seem to distinguish, and seem to want to demolish anything in their path.

I can imagine that pests can get a real foothold in a weak tree and take ever more advantage of its now available resources as it fails, more and more insects, fungi would setting up home.

_Nicolas_

yes

The exception is slugs, they attack both healthy and unhealthy plants about the same, in fact at times they seem to target healthy plants over unhealthy ones!

Loxley

no

No. I think it's more that weaker plants are more susceptible to being affected by pests, rather than attracting more of them per se.